Looking Towards the Future
by SunShower21
Summary: Naruto reflects on his relationship with Sakura and where it all fell apart. This is a story about learning how to let go in order to look towards the future. Oneshot. NaruSaku contains drug use and teenage pregnancy


_Okay guys this is my first ever oneshot.This idea just popped into my head and I thought why not write it down. It's clearly AU and the pairing is Naru/Saku sort of.This isn't my favorite pairing but I don't hate it.For all of those people who read my story Songs of the Street don't worry I will update it soon. I haven't forgotten about it. The next chapter should be up in a week. Anyway This story contains drug use and teenage pregancy. If you don't like or agree with either of those things then I don't advise you to read this. I'm sorryif this story contains some spelling and gramatical errors. I wrote this in an hour so, it's not perfect. __Well enough of my rambling. I hope you enjoy this oneshot._

_I don't own Naruto( clearly) this is where I'm supposed to say something witty but I don't have anything to say. Oh well_

**_Looking Towards the Future_**

Twenty four year old Naruto Uzumaki walked into his small apartment. He looked around his small apartment expecting to see his wife and child. Sighing he looked down at the table and saw traces of a white powdery substance on the table. Quickly panicking he moved as fast as his sore muscles would allow him through the apartment that he, his wife and his daughter shared. He turned around to find his six year old daughter daughter Kohana in a corner asleep and hugging her stuffed rabbit with his wife nowhere to be found. "_Damn Sakura."_ He thought. With a sigh he picked his sleeping daughter up into his arms and she awoke.

"Daddy" She said wrapping her small arms around his neck. "Mommy is gone she took my money that you gave me for my class trip." The tiny six year old girl said tearfully as she buried her head into his chest.  
Naruto patted the small girl on her back. He looked down on his daughter. With her shoulder length blonde hair, and pointy face she resembled him except she had her mother's eyes. Those were the same eyes that he fell in love with many years ago. Her green eyes had changed since then. They no longer held the liveliness and determination that they once did. Instead they were listless, tired, and sad. They were the eyes of a drug addict. Scoping up his trembling daughter he made his decision.

" Ko Chan go into your room and pack every thing into a bag okay sweetie."

The little girl ran to her room to obey her father's command.

Naruto left the room to go follow his own command. He walked into the small room that he and Sakura had shared. The room held so many memories. In fact the apartment did. He reminisced on when he first brought the apartment for Sakura. They were so young then. It was the last year of high school and Sakura had found out that she was pregnant. They had only been together for a year. He had loved her since he first laid eyes on her when he was 10. The only problem was she didn't care about him. So he spent his middle school and high school life trying to get her to feel the same about him. She was in love with a pale brooding dark haired boy named Sasuke. They went out in their freshman year of high school. Sasuke was Naruto's best friend and rival. They were like brothers. Naruto though jealous of Sasuke stood back and let the love of his life go out with his best friend. He put on his fake smile in front of them and continued to play the role of supportive best friend even though he was dying inside. In their sophomore year however things changed. Sauske was found dead one morning in his bedroom. It was later confirmed that he had overdosed on cocaine. Sakura was heartbroken for the longest time. She wouldn't speak or smile. Naruto was there for her every step of the way on her road to recovery. In their junior year she came around and asked him out. They went out for a year. It was a happy time for both of them. In senior year she found out that she was pregnant. Being young and foolish they thought they could handle it. Naruto proposed to her and a month later they married.

He used the money his dead parents had left him to buy her the apartment. She cried on the day he brought her there to live. In the months before the baby came they lived happily. He worked two jobs to pay for their expenses. He would come home for 5 hours to sleep and then he would go out to work. He spent his free time with Sakura thinking of names for the baby, picking up things for the baby and taking her to all the places that she wanted to go.

The baby came premature. At first he was scared but Sakura and the baby girl were fine. They named her Kohana because it meant little flower. It held the same meaning as Sakura's name only it was a name of her own. A year after the baby was born Sakura started acting differently. Sometimes she would wander away and leave the baby by herself. Then money started disappearing. The times that Sakura was home she was cold and distant to Naruto and even her daughter. The day Naruto found that white powder in her coat was an all time low for him. He sat down with her trying to figure out how and why she would turn to that white powder to solve her problems. She just pushed him away and left the house. Naurto was worried and took so much time off work trying to stay with his daughter and fixing his wife's problem that he lost his job.

Naruto refused to give up though. He got a new job with better hours so he could be with Kohana. Despite Sakura's disappearances he stayed strong for Kohana. She was the most important thing in his life. One night he got a phone call at 2 in the morning from the city hospital. Sakura had overdosed and she had been found by the police. Naruto stayed by his wife's bedside with tears running down his eyes. It was on her hospital bed that he had seen how far gone she was. She was 22 yet she had the weight of a 11 year old girl. She looked like a skeleton. Her once, smooth, thick pink hair was thin, tangled and dirty. Her arms were covered in bruises and needle marks. However much pain it caused him to see the love of his life reduced to this it hurt even worse when the name that she called out in her sleep was Sasuke. After that Naruto just left the room. He knew that she was deeply in love with Sasuke but he thought that he could in time turn her focus towards him. It was from the moment that she called out Sasuke's name that he knew that she would never love him. It was a truth that he had known all along but kept denying until that moment.

A little while later Sakura left the hospital after going to rehab and tried to turn her life around. She tried to be a better mother to Kohana and she even tried to be a better wife to Naruto. He knew that it was a front. He tried time and time again to tell her that since they both knew that she didn't love him like he loved her that maybe it was best for one of them to leave for a little while so they could think a little more about this relationship. Sakura would hear none of it and insisted on staying. She even put him through guilt trips saying that he was breaking his promise to love her eternally and how he claimed he never broke his promises. Naruto would be quiet after that. She managed to stay clean for a year. Naruto went ahead and got another job to earn a little more money for them since Sakura could watch Kohana during the time that he was working. The extra job gave him an opportunity to get away from the house and Sakura's attempts at faking love for him. While it was nice for awhile he knew that she was acting like she loved him out of pity and he would rather she hated him than pitied him. Life went on like that for a year until Sakura started disappearing again. When she came home sometimes she could be found nodding off with a needle in her arm or surrounded by white powder.

When Naruto found his daughter in the corner he made the only decision that he could. It was time to leave. He wasn't breaking his promise to love her by leaving. He would always love Sakura. From the moment he laid eyes on her at the age of 10 he was enchanted by her. The Sakura he fell in love with was different now and she would probably never go back to the old Sakura. Living in the past had clearly destroyed Sakura. She was still pining for Sasuke years and years later. He knew what he had to do. What could he say? It was time to move on. Kohana was the new love of his life and seeing her mother that way was tearing her apart. The best place for him to go would be back to his home town of Konoha. A quiet little town only a three hour drive from the city. He would be damned if Kohana's life was going to turn out like Sakura's. She and Sakura's name meant the same thing. They were both flowers but one was dying and one was just starting to bloom. It was his job to worry about caring f or the blooming flower. He would make sure that she would continue to bloom and not turn into a dying flower like her mother.

He put all of his necessary things in his bag like his clothes and toiletries. He didn't want anything to remind him of his past. He left the wedding picture, his wedding ring and the pictures of him Sakura and Kohana. Just as he was walking out of his room he saw a picture of him and Sakura in high school. He sighed as he remembered how simple things were then. The picture went into the bag with all of his other possessions. He wanted Kohana to remember her mother the way she was. Before the cocaine had taken away the sparkle that was in her eyes the eyes that her daughter now possessed.

"I'm ready daddy." Called Kohana from the door way. Her blonde hair was in two short braids and she was dressed in her big green over coat to match her eyes. For a second Naruto thought he was 10 years old again, but then he realized that the thought was ridiculous. " Let's go Ko chan." Naruto said as he moved towards the doorway. Without a glance behind him he left the apartment with his bag in one hand and his daughter's hand in the other, his memories behind him and a new bright future ahead of him.

_Whew its all over. I'm sorry to all of you Sakura fans. I 'm not really a Sakura fan myself. I don't hate her though. It was still hard for me to write her in this situation. Can you please give me some feedback? PLEASE! If you are going to review please do it in a constructive way. No hating. It's a waste of time and energy and I really don't want to read it. If you want me to respond to your review please let me know. Thank you for reading this. _

_- Sayonara ( i dunno if it's spelled right if it's not sorry)_


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